So yes I have been pretty busy with some events that have been happing, two weeks ago I was at Creation Festival: North West with BFC (Boarders For Christ) in Enumclaw, WA. Now that was a great time, was shooting for a lot of it, but had a ton of fun, got to meet some rad people and heard some great bands. There is not a whole lot to share about the photos, but take a look:

Road Trippin’

A shot from the truck.

Thumbs up from Noel Riske.

Power lines commin’ in hot.

Same with the windmills.

Michael Shamberg, bringing the fire on the mic.

Zach Black, in black and white.

Joshua Monteith welcomes you to creation.

Joey Ozol gets gnarly at Creation.

Joey shreds.

Joey Shreds again.

Corey Chilton bringing the fire for the last time.

Aaron Vetsch, how handsome.

Looks better now, doesn’t he?

Aaron gives tattoos.

Now this week I have been at INWYC (Inland North West Year Book Camp) just going through work shops to learn how to produce a great yearbook. I have taken a few photo classes while I have been here and they are pretty simple but they are fun I guess. We had a “photo contest” during one of the break out sessions which was fun because it was on Gonzaga University’s campus which is just beautiful and had some fun doing that. Here are the photos:

Im going to try to post more :/

Thanks!
-Stephen

Yes, a color photo can do the same exact things but black and white typically can be very moving and very powerful.

Please examine:

Thank you,

-Steve

Where I find my self spending the most amount of time is editing  video. Im so slow at it and not exactly the best at it either. I guess video just takes a lot more time that I thought it would. Maybe I just need to have more patients.

Right not I am in a photography drought. I don’t have anything that I want to go shoot. It is quite bothersome, I really need some inspiration for sure. I have found myself looking back through my blog and just viewing all of my old photos. What I used to think was so bad, I really like and what I used to like I think it looks so bad. I think that I can speak for most photographers (artists too) that we go through phases of liking and disliking our work. While being in a photography dilemma at the moment I need to keep looking at others work and innovate, not imitate. That right there is a good life motto, Ill end on that note.

Here is what I have been shooting:

And here is my media for this post:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z2SR7pHAfY

The photo aspect of the 7D is super legit. I love shooting stills with it way more than my previous 40D (R.I.P 4oD) It is just different and this different is good. The ISO capabilities are just amazing, shooting at 2000 ISO is just beautiful and it is so clear. I can not wait to see where this takes me with photography. Overall the Canon 7D is super rad and I am stoked.

This last week I have just been shooting what ever looks eye-grabbing. Nothing really in specific, just random stuff that I feel needs to be documented. Lots of these photos are in my yard, street or just in my area. I sometimes feel that I have to go somewhere to go shoot but really I can just walk outside of my house and whammy I have a photo. I live in such a beautiful area it is very simple to get a good shot. Since I got my new camera I am working harder on trying to spend a lot of of time on the photo so I have a great exposure, great depth of field and great composition. I have been focusing on depth of field a lot in this last week because I believe that one can share large amounts of emotion through the angle and depth of field. I got a complement this last week about a photo that is on my blog that really made the person feel moved and really feel what is going on in the photo. He said the he saw past the image and really felt to emotion being given off. That is something that I have been trying to incorporate in my photography and I am going to really work on showing the true emotion and the direct feeling being given off from the photo. Here are the images from the week:

Cody Schneider, before the fall.

Cody Schneider after the fall.

BoardSkate.

That is the question, have you hugged your bike today?

My bike.

A drum set I would like to sell.

Some flowers outside my house.

More flowers outside my house.

Even more flowers outside my house.

These are stems to a flower that are pretty standard but look cool, right?

Flower photography is weird. Almost all of the shots look pretty standard (for me at least) They usually are just a macro photo of a flower and bokeh in the background. You just wait and I will get a flower photo that won’t be standard and will different from the typical flower shot.

Here is my tester footage with my new 7D:

Canon 7D tester footage from stephen Sturges on Vimeo.

I defiantly have a lot to learn about video editing, shooting video, and just about every thing. This is my first video I have actually made and it is just mainly tester footage but let me know what you think, areas of improvement and all that jazz. I would love to learn how to film decent because I really do think that it is fun.

Thank you all, please comment.

-Stephen

Aaron vetsch

Brandon Di Simone

Hats being thrown!

Before they were thrown

My brother, Scott and Principal or CHS, Randy Russell

Joey Ozol

Best friend shot

I spotted some classy graduates, Graham Neff and Lane Mehringer

After graduation, my family and I headed over the Glacier National Park, Montana for some outdoor-ness. Though I didn’t have a camera, I did have a brother that would sometimes lend me his camera, thanks again Scott. Something that most people do not take into consideration is the beauty that God has placed before us. God has placed amazing nature right in front of us and we are just too “busy” to notice the beauty of it. When I was there in Glacier, I wanted to take the time to slow down and acknowledge the beauty that The Lord has given us. Something I read in Psalm 104:24, 30: How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures…. When You send Your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth. Those verses were perfect for what I was seeing In Glacier. It was truly one of the most beautiful places I have every seen. Something that I am going to start doing is visually document the beauty of our earth and bring recognition to God’s beauty. Here are the photos from Glacier:

Not sure if this was carved into this tree or if it was just naturally like this, regardless I like it.

Just some grass I found photo-worthy.

An interesting fungus on some leaves.

Moss on a log.

Beauty.

A lonesome leaf.

A lightning fire came through here.

Water on some leaves after a heavy rain.

Thank you for viewing, please comment!

-Steve

1^st – Facial Expression. This is what seems to make or break a shot. The photo could be perfect composition and perfect lighting, but if the subject has a bad facial expression it can pretty much ruin the photo.

2^nd – Body Language. If the subject is doing a stupid pose, it could ruin the photo. The photo could have the best exposure, composition, best anything but with bad body language, or a lame pose, bam, the photo is considered ruined (to me of course).

3^rd – Lighting. Regardless of what look the photographer is going for, lighting is key. If it is a silhouette portrait (doesn’t make a whole lot of since, for a portrait) the lighting has to be prime. If it is just a studio portrait, still the lighting has to be dead on. If it is a lifestyle portrait, more often than not, the lighting has to be solid.

4^th – Composition. Where you place the subject matters a whole lot also. A perfectly composed portrait is always nice to look at. Make sure there are not clipped/missing appendages or clipped heads. People want to look at a well-composed portrait and if it is sloppy, it is typically a bad portrait, let a lone photo in general.

5^th – Story. This is a very important thing to remember. People want to look at a photo and really see what is going on. It is very crucial for the viewer to see the story that the model/subject is sharing with them. Eyes are a big part of that. One can share so much just through the eyes and also with facial expression.

Those 5 concepts are something that I have tried my best to include in every portrait I shoot and for that matter every photo I take. So with my final project, I shot portraits. But I started noticing it is a lot harder to get those concepts perfect and in every photo. With this project I have tried to descriptively show the subjects story and demonstrate the skills that I have obtained shooting this last year.

I originally started out with about fourteen portraits, but I slowly go rid of a few and then narrowed it down to ten portraits. I used the fact that your project is as strong as your weakest photo. I wouldn’t consider the unused photos bad but defiantly not as strong. I was originally going the balanced contrast of 10 photos that five are black and white and five are color. With in that I was going for five that were horizontal and five that were vertical. It didn’t completely happen as planned but I ended up with six horizontal photos and four vertical photos. Also I have four color portraits and six black and white portraits. I realized that I have shot the majority of my portraits vertical this last year. It seems with a battery grip I got lazy and shot so much vertical that I forgot about horizontal shooting. So that is why I tried to shoot half of my portraits horizontal and half vertical. I ended up with the six horizontal shots and feel good about that number. It isn’t the balance that I wanted but it was close. I feel that I have a way better grip of shooting horizontal now and especially horizontal portraits. Something also that I noticed is a horizontal portrait (to me of course) is more powerful than a typical vertical portrait. Maybe that is because I thought vertical portraits were just a little boring to me.

When I first approached the final project, I was like “I am going to do black and white portraits! Yay!” Before I started shooting I thought that a black and white photo was more powerful than a colored photo. But once I did start shooting I came to the conclusion that it is not a black and white portrait that makes a photo powerful, but it is a combination of those five points I jotted down above. A colored photo can be equally as powerful and moving as a black and white portrait.

Here are the photos of the final project:

Bobby Gibbs

Essex Prescott

Lane Mehringer

Cody Schneider

Mario Martinez

Kyle Harris

Zach Black

Andrew Harder

Josh Tyvan

Michael Shamberg

For the very first one of Bobby Gibbs, I had my 540EZ flash focused at 50mm and at 1/2 power pointed down towards his feet. I had this idea for this portrait because almost every single portrait is in the top corners and I felt that this was a perfect angle for him. Flashing for portraits outside of studio is a lot of fun mainly because you have so much freedom with the lights and can get really creative. I have shot a lot more with my flashes and not the strobes due to the portability  factor and also it is so easy to focus the flash on just one section. But there are advantages to the strobes because a lot more power.

For the second one of Essex Prescott, it is all natural light which I really like. After shooting with flashes for a lot of things it becomes like an addiction. It is just so easy to use the flashes and makes it a lot easier to expose photos. But going back to natural light is a lot of fun for me right now. It was shot at ƒ/ 1.8  and I did that primarily to get a perfect bokeh. The background is all grass that was swirling so it was perfect for a bokeh shot. This shot just seems like a perfect photo for Essex because it fits for his normal environment because he is an out-doorzy person.

For the third shot of Lane Mehringer, I had him in the studio which doesn’t really seem like it would fit for Lane, but I used a black back drop for his shot because almost every time I see him, he is in black, so it fits. But I shot wide for this one so I could get a little disproportion in him. It doesn’t make him look as tall and seems to fit him. I tried to incorporate his long hair as much as possible and this was the best shot of him with his hair.

For the fourth one of Cody Schneider we were out at the golf course and though this isn’t really who Cody is, I really like the photo. Shows the story of us out there. The bokeh is perfect for the shot, really reminds me of golf. This one was natural light also. I did try this one with flashes so I could light up the background a tad but stopped using the flashes for this shot of him.

With the shot of Mario Martinez we were down town shooting some skateboarding and he was just looking at me so I snapped this photo and I wasn’t really intending for a portrait but it came out really good and I love it. I was shooting portraits of somebody else in this same spot but Mario is very photogenic so I really like it. It really fits in for rule 1 and 2 of mine so I am pleased with it.

Kyle Harris is one of the best models I have ever used and it is partly because of a nice face and a grungey beard and ear rings. I love the exposure and composition of this. With the horizontal photo like this one, it really makes this shot strong so I am quite pleased with it.

With the photo of Zach Black, I had a flash behind him lighting up the door way to bring out all of the textures and giving a very proper amount of back lighting around him. I had Mike Shamberg hold another flash to left of Zach and point it at his face so the viewer can really see the facial expression.

Back to the Avadon photos. I shot the photo of Andrew with the Avadon style. Why? Because he was the king of portraits and Andrew is the perfect person for a studio shot like this one. I tried to incorporate his dreds in with this shot because he is quite proud of them. This to me is my most favorite photo in the whole series because it just has so much power. It also shows the progress that he has in his dreds and how long he has been growing them which is something the “dred-heads” are proud of I have been informed.

Josh Tyvan is fun person to photograph. He is a very serious person so it makes for a good shot. I usually only shoot skate shots of Josh but this was a shot that I got of him after he was done skating. It shows the good expression and color contrasts so I love those factors. Playing with bokeh is a lot of fun because you can do so much with the textures. The trees and folliage in general in the back ground of Josh’s shot really stood out to me so I thought “bokeh?!?”

Last but not least, Michael Shamberg. Taking photo of photographers is probably one of my favorite things to do. They understand what has to be done, where they have to be, and just know how to pose. It is fun shooting with fellow photogs because we can discuss the photos and come to a steady medium and combine our skills and create a great shot. So I have to give Mike some props for helping compose this shot. When I looked back through my blog I saw a photo of my friend Tim in very close to the same spot so I thought that I should come back there and re-do it. Going back to spots that I have shot at is fun because I can re-create an image that I have already done and compare them. This one of Mike I like a lot more because I feel like a composed it better and it has better exposure.

The inspiration for this project was mainly sparked up by looking back through my blog and finding something that I feel strong with. But there is this one photographer, Corey Perrine, who is a photo-journalist that I have been following his work ever since we came in contact via Sportsshooter.com when I contacted him about a lens. But seriously his work, portraits specifically is just amazing and I love viewing it. Thank you Corey for being my inspiration.

That is my final project, think you for viewing please comment.

-Steve

P.S.- I will continue to blog throughout the summer so please check weekly

There is so much to talk about from this trip but I think the highlight was our mountain climb. It truly was a mountain climb. I do quite a bit of climbing my self and I can easily say that this was a challenging climb, especially in skate shoes. Props to trip member, Brynn Hathaway for conquering our mountain with a healing ACL and her knee in a knee brace. There are photos below of the mountain. Here are the shots from the trip:

Group Shot

Aaron Vetsch on left, Joey Ozol on right.

Aaron Vetsch everyone.

Vaguely you can see a climber towards the bottom corner, They thought we couldn’t make it to the top, psshh.

Beauty in the Northwest.

More beauty.

A good sunset to start the trip off.

One of the mountain goats I spent 30 minutes chasing around the mountain. It is weird, they don’t like to be followed, yet they love to follow.

A good stream to take a photo of with a slow shutter.

Same stream, different spot, I didn’t have a tripod so its sitting on a log.

Pathway leading towards our destination mountain in the top left corner.

Another sunset shot from the car.

Can you say “natural framing”?

Thought this was a cool photo.

Some cross hatching in bokeh form.

Typical road trip photo.

Some locks I thought looked cool.

Joey Ozol, Shredding.

Bringing skateboarding back to the old school days, literally. Behind Joey is a school. There is a skatepark in a school parking lot. How lucky are those students.

Pretty much our staple food of the trip.

The Leavenworth Maypoll.

We all really wanted to get a group photo, but I didn’t have a tripod so I came up with the idea of taking individual portraits of everyone and combining them on to one canvas to make a complete group shot. Props to Joey Ozol for taking the one of me. If you look at the mountain shot with the blue sky (5th photo down) we managed to climb to pretty much the top of the mountain/peak on the left. We felt like champions. We saw mountain goats, rolled some large rocks off the side of the mountain. I didn’t get any photos of that because I was pre-occupied with the rolling of rocks. Defiantly something I wish I had taken a few photos for.

For the photos of Joey skating, I had my friend Matt hold a flash above the wall pointed down on to Joey just so I could really expose the back ground good and flash Joey with some fill light. We were pretty excited of the out come of those shots. We plan on making a trip back in winter (hopefully there is some snow) to hit some rails in Leavenworth. Leavenworth has some very impressive rails and ledges that are perfect for snowboarding.

For the majority of the photos it was just mess around stuff but it was tight, we had a good trip.

Here are the rest of the photos from the week:

Good ‘ole Coeur d’Alene Lake

A good sunset for Coeur d’Alene

The Plane down on the lake docks.

Trevor Groth, Coeur d’Alene, Chamber of Commerce

Zack Black, Coeur d’Alene skatepark

If you remember a while back I shot a photo of Joey Ozol ollie-ing through the Chamber of Commerce heart downtown CDA in mid-winter. This last week, we shot it again but with flashes. Trevor was trying kick flips through it but never landed one, but he did land the ollie. I had a light to the left of the heart pointing directly where he would be. And for the last shot of Zach Black doing a back tail slide at the park I had very similar lighting on it. Really loving skate photography right now, so that is a big part of my photography.

Defiantly my influence for this week has been Garric Ray. He is a photographer for transworld skateboarding and wow, he is just super good. His lighting on everything is just perfect and he has published so many skate shots with natuaral framing and I am pretty sure that is what won me over with him. I have always follow his work but have just recently been reading a lot about him. Props to Garric Ray.

Thanks for looking,

-Steve

Dash Kamp

Josh Wing

Dash Kamp

For the first shot of Dash I had a flash on the first stair (counting from top to bottom) pointing toward Dash and the rail. The photo of Josh Wing with a true and proper tail press is shot with the 540EZ on camera and isn’t as good of a shot as the one of Dash but still kind of a fun shot primarely because of the properness of the trick which I have found to be key in action sport photography. I think that I got perfect timing on the shot of Dash mainly because of facial expression. Facial expression is something that I have been trying to work on a lot because that can basically make or break a snow shot (if its a close up shot, totally depending on the style/angle that your going for) and skate shot, which brings me to the next thing that I shot. Also last week a bunch of us from BFC went out to the Post Falls skate park to hang with that group of guys and just talk and chill with the guys (some girls) over there. Since I don’t really skate at all I snapped a few shots over there just to document the good times. Here are the shots:

Joey Ozol

Greg Foeller

Tyler Jenicek

Josh Tyvan

Josh Tyvan

With the first photo of Joey Ozol, it is my more favorite in the group along with Tyler Jenicek”s shot. Both of them seem to give the stronger photo impression to me. Tell me what you thing with that. In the photo of Greg Foeller, it looks like a clump (large clump) of sensor dust but really it is just a very annoying cloud. After looking at it a few times I have come to the conclusion that it almost adds to the photo in a positive way. Yes a little distracting but I can not move clouds out of the way and didn’t feel that I should clone something like that out. With the first photo of Joey, I had a light placed to the bottom left of the ledge shooting up towards Joey. I seems like perfect lighting to me because of the sharpness of the subject but also the depth of field in the whole frame. Also the light on the face seems great and though it isn’t a very serious trick I feel like it is on of my stronger shots. The second photo of Greg I had a flash directly below him shooting vertically at Greg while he is doing a very proper grab. Something that I love about that shot is you see the full subject, and both hands. Sometimes while shooting skateboarding, the hands are either hidden behind the body, or they are hiding the body. This seems like it is neither so I was pleased with it. The third photo of Tyler I had a very similar light set up like the first one but it was just farther back and on a different ledge. The sky and background seem to really fulfill this shot along with the style that Tyler has. Props to him right? Last but not least the two photos of Josh Tyvan. With the first one I had a light to the left, strobing underneath the rail that is not visible, but still gets hands and face. and for the last one of the fly-out melon I had a light to the bottom right just out side of the frame shooting upwards towards Josh. I feel that every time I go out and shoot with the flashes that I learn something more. I really am loving flash photography a ton and really want to learn more. Here is a link to Blabac Photo, my inspiration and probably one of the coolest guys in the skate photography scene. He has been around since skating really got big. He still shoots covers for Transworld like he did back in 2001, and the shots that Blabac produces are just super rad. He wrote/created a photo book called Blabac Photo: the Art of Skateboard Photography It is a book about his skateboarding work in the last 20 years and I really want to go purchase it.

Thanks a lot, please comment.

-Steve

-Steve

Later in the week I shot some stuff on my slack line. Put a strobe on either side of Cody (the slacker) and shot at it from above and to the left of the line. Slacking has become quite popular and it is defiantly one of my favorite things to have. I still have a ton to learn about lighting but I now have a lot better understanding of where to put the lights with out having to move them around a lot trying to figure out what will look good. I am going to try to get a lot of posts that have to do with lighting in the next few weeks and really try to progress with the art of strobing.

And to finish the week off I shot some more skating. I have started looking at a lot more skating shots and magazine covers and so many of the “pro” shots are super good, but they are super simple. Yes, there are the shots that are ultra-wide and super tech lighting, but the majority is just simplicity. That is something I am going to try and work on is just keeping it simple. I have looked through all my skate shots from this year and last year and as I have become more interested in skate photography, I have noticed I have developed a style for me. That is one more area that I have been working at is to get a style of photography that represents what I do and stick with it. If you look at any professional photographers in the skiing/snowboarding/wakeboarding/skateboarding community, they all have their standard style and maybe a little flare every now and then, but the majority of their work is all THEIR style. That is what photographer Erik Seo has done. He has simple shots, with simple lighting, but the photos are really good. He is always pushing the limits of the skiing industry. Another photographer in the same industry as Erik is Darcy Bacha, he takes similar approaches on photography like Erik, but has a little more tech in his photos. THe thing that links both of those photographers together is that they both have a style that is their own, and they stick to it. That is something that I would like to develop in my work.

Here are this weeks shots:

And Last but not least, a few fisheye photos:

Nothings exciting, just messing around and a very attractive photo of Twitchell himself.

Thanks for viewing,

-Steve